Marissa Henley - Loving Your Friend through Cancer: Moving beyond Im Sorry to Meaningful Support

Facing Your New Assignment

When I describe my cancer experience, October 25, 2010, is the day I share in the most detailbecause those are the details I will never forget. I had just finished giving instructions to a babysitter before leaving for a parent-teacher conference at my first-graders school. My phone rang, and I saw that it was the radiologist who had biopsied the lump in my breast a few days earlier.

I hurried to my bedroom to answer the call. As I stood by my bed, I heard the doctor say, Im sorry, Marissa; this is a tumor. He explained that it wasnt breast cancer but rather cancer in the lining of the blood vesselsa rare and aggressive cancer called angiosarcoma. I sat on the edge of the bed and searched in my nightstand for a paper and pen. Id never heard this strange word before and needed him to spell it. As he explained more, I rushed to the computer and typed it into Google. But my mind was too shocked to read anything on the screen. Concerned by my silence, the doctor asked if I was okay. I said, Im not sure if youre telling me I have one year, or five years, or what. His reply was not reassuring: We just dont know yet.

It was the day before my thirty-fourth birthday. My boys were ages six and four, and my baby girl was not yet eighteen months old. And, when I ended the call with the doctor and turned my attention to the computer screen, I read that only 30 percent of those diagnosed with this disease live for five years. I slammed my laptop shut. The first of many tears began falling as I begged the Lord to let me walk my baby into first grade. It was my earnest prayer for months and then years, and still is today: Lord, please let me live to see my babies grow up. Please, Lord. Please.

In my shock and grief, the Lord poured out comfort and peace through his Word and through the prayers and encouragement of others. Two weeks after my diagnosis, I wrote about that difficult day in my online CaringBridge journal:

That afternoon is kind of a blur. I remember during one of the early phone calls, I was starting to lose it and just started repeating out loud, God is good. God is good. God is good. All I could do in those first terrible moments was to cling to what I knew to be true about God. I knew that everything I had known to be true about His character, His power, His love for me and His faithfulness were still just as true as it had been hours before. I knew from what we had been studying in Isaiah that God had given me this assignment for His glory and for my good. Because I belong to God in Christ, nothing can separate me from His love.

Due to the rare and aggressive nature of the cancer, I received treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, six hundred miles from my hometown. The first step in my nine-month treatment plan was high doses of chemotherapy. Every three weeks, I received four straight days of chemo, including a pump that I wore around the clock. The first two rounds took place in my hometown. After those initial rounds, a CT scan showed significant shrinking of the tumor. This was great news for my long-term prognosis. If chemo shrank the tumor, then we could hope it was destroying lingering cancer cells that could metastasize in the future.

But then we learned that I needed to enroll in a clinical trial to receive the rest of the chemo, and I started spending two out of every three weeks in Houston. At that time, I wasnt sure I would live long enough for my daughter to remember me. I didnt want to spend any of the time I had left in a Houston hospital room. But I didnt have a choice. I spent nine weeks away from my family and missed New Years, Valentines Day, and all three of my kids birthdays. The logistical challenges were daunting. And yet the Lord provided for every need, and my friends pitched in both in Houston and at home to care for us. (Youll read all about their kindness and support in the following chaptersI cant wait to tell you more!)

When I was home, I was usually weak and sick, requiring several blood transfusions and dealing with complications from having low red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. I needed countless injections, blood draws, and medications. I visited some sort of health care facility almost every day, with no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, and a central line coming out of my chest.

After seven rounds of chemo, the tumor had shrunk to almost nothing, and my body couldnt take any more of the harsh drugs. The next step was radiation: five days a week for five weeks, in Houston. I hated spending more time away from home, but I felt much better physically. We brought the kids to Houston for two weeks and explored the city together. It was almost like a family vacation, except for the time each day when I lay inside a machine and had a high-energy beam of radiation shot at my life-threatening tumor.

Following radiation, I returned home for several weeks. My hometown doctors struggled to get my platelets, which were still devastated from chemo, high enough for me to have surgery. In July 2011, I returned to Houston for a mastectomy. The Lord used the skilled hands of my surgeon to remove the last traces of cancer from my body with widely clear margins.

And then, ten months after that phone call, I heard a cancer survivors four favorite words: No evidence of disease. By Gods grace, I remain cancer-free today.

My friends began caring for me within hours of my diagnosis. One friend folded laundry in my bedroom while I made endless phone calls, and another friend silently cooked spaghetti in my kitchen. We were all in shock.

In the days that followed, I kept apologizing to my friends. I knew they were distraught and their lives would be challenging in the coming months. The year before, I had walked the road of cancer with my sister-in-law, and I knew the sacrifices that would be required of my friends. Finally, one of my best friends sat me down and said, Marissa, you keep telling us this is an assignment for you from the Lord. Well, he didnt give this assignment only to you. He gave us this assignment, too. We are ready. We are in this with you. So stop apologizing to us.

Over the next several months, my friends sacrificed and suffered with me. Sometimes one of them refers to that time as when we had cancer, and then tries to correct herself by saying, I mean, when you had cancer. And every time, I tell her, No, we had cancer together.

God repeatedly showed us he was going to meet each and every one of our needs, just as he had promised. He placed us in a caring community in the town where my husband and I were born and raised. He surrounded us with a wide circle of loving friends through our church family, our neighbors, my husbands colleagues, our parents churches, and a small Christian school that acted like another church family. He used an army of friends, family, acquaintances, and even strangers to provide tangible, emotional, and spiritual support as we battled for my health and for my life. Every time our challenges seemed insurmountable, the Lord revealed the next step in his plan to provide for us.

None of my friends could meet all my needs, but they each did what they could. They brought meals to our family three nights a week for eight months. They drove my kids to school, preschool, piano lessons, and play dates. They traveled to Houston to care for me during chemo. They put my name on prayer lists all over the country. They sent texts, emails, and cards to remind me I was loved. They listened compassionately as I struggled with grief, anger, fear, and stress. God wove my friends threads of support into a beautiful tapestry to provide for all our needs.